


The End of Steven G. Rogers

by belladonnaprice



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:34:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22820107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/belladonnaprice/pseuds/belladonnaprice
Summary: Inspired by the fanart on this post:https://belladonnaprice.tumblr.com/post/182258861589
Kudos: 2





	The End of Steven G. Rogers

The compulsion is too strong. 

Steve knows he’s supposed to be painting the advert for Wilson’s Grocery; knows that fucking it up is going to cost him beef for the rest of the month. He can’t help himself; he doesn’t even know what he’s painting until he steps back. 

Well, to be quite honest, he doesn’t know what he’s painted even when he’s standing across the street to see the whole thing. 

It looks like a man; a man made of metal? Iron, his mind whispers to him. Like something out of one of those Asimov pulps Bucky was always toting around. A robot shouldn’t feel so lifelike he thinks a little hysterically. 

With the image slapped onto brick, the feeling of pressure in his skull fades. Briefly he rests his head in his hands, then he sets to work washing the still wet paint off and putting up the billboard he was actually commissioned for. 

—

Three weeks later, it happens again. This time the image is of a large man with gold hair, a cape, and a hammer. The owner of Cooper’s Gym likes it so well he asks Steve to leave it up. ‘Exercise here and become godlike’ he jokes.

Steve’s head feels like it’s full of crackling fire the whole time. 

—

Seven more incidents and nearly a year later, Bucky gets his sergeants stripes and Steve passes out from the overwhelming wave of terror/grief/fury.

After leaving Bucky at the Expo, after meeting Erskine, after everything, he destroys one wall of their apartment drawing, painting, scraping image after image of death and sorrow and war and a man with a robot arm bearing Bucky’s face into the boards beneath the wall paper. He doesn’t sleep that night; the agony in his head is too severe. 

—

Steve never makes it to the bunker; he doesn’t meet Peggy. 

The world burns. 

—

Decades later 

(You’ve been asleep, Cap, for nearly seventy years…)

Days later 

(How do you feel? Taller.)

Centuries later

(They used the Time Stone; tried to wipe you out of the game before you ever joined it. Then they used the Mind Stone to erase everything you ever knew. Guess they should have used the Soul Stone, too, seeing as erasing your mind didn’t erase who you had become.)

Steve doesn’t know which version of himself he is now; doesn’t know how old he is or how long he’s lived this life. They destroyed tiny Steve and put Captain America in his place. The universal constant says there must always be a Steve Rogers; Stark had rattled of something about conservation of matter and spacetime voids that would pretzel the universe. But scrappy little Stevie is gone and Captain America stands in his place. That’s all he is now. Self-righteous, proud, and unyielding. The Captain. Barnes looks at him sometimes with the strangest expression. Something that’s a little grief tinged, but mostly resigned. 

He doesn’t date (not Beth, not Sharon, not Lillian from accounting). He doesn’t have friends (Wilson is a decent addition to the roster, he thinks, but a little too trusting.) He doesn’t know anything but the next fight. 

And when the Stones next turn up in his timeline, he loses everything he never cared about.

**Author's Note:**

> # so uh...this got dark #sometimes i write things #if i were a super villian this is how i would do it #if you erase Erskine's Good Man all that's left is the soldier grinding it out #with no heart steve rogers will always lose #and once the avengers 'restore' the timeline #they stop looking at the problem #and never realize steve rogers no longer exists


End file.
